The St. John Fisher Missale for the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite

From the Catholic community of the University of Cambridge comes this on-line, .pdf Missal for the faithful to use in celebrating sung Masses of the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite:

The name ‘Saint John Fisher Missale’ for this website was chosen because most of its contents were originally made for the use of the faithful at Fisher House, the Catholic Chaplaincy of the University of Cambridge, which a few months after the promulgation of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum established a weekly Mass according to the Extraordinary Form.

The University Chaplaincy, founded in 1895, is fittingly named after St John Fisher, who was not only a Saint and a Martyr, but also one of the most important figures in the history of the University of Cambridge.

John Fisher, the son of a merchant, came up to Michaelhouse (later suppressed and taken over by Trinity College) in 1484 and eventually became head of several colleges, Proctor, Vice-Chancellor and Chancellor of the University. He was instrumental in transforming the late-medieval University into a centre of the modern, humanist scholarship, and persuaded his friend Erasmus of Rotterdam to work for a while at Queens’ College. Fisher became confessor to Lady Margaret Beaufort (+ 1509), the mother of Henry VII, and through her patronage he was able to found two colleges (Christ’s College and St John’s College) and to endow academic positions that could support a true Catholic reform of the Church, including a chair in Biblical studies and a preachership. In 1504 he was appointed Bishop of the small and impoverished diocese of Rochester, and in the following years he worked there as a zealous pastor, several times refusing to exchange it for a better-endowed see.

When King Henry VIII moved with increasing aggressiveness against the Church — both to use her endowments for his wars and to divorce Queen Catherine of Aragon — John Fisher was the only bishop in England who remained loyal to the Holy Father and opposed the King’s plans. Having been imprisoned several times in the early 1530s, Fisher was eventually arrested as a traitor because he refused to acknowledge the King’s supposed marriage to Ann Boleyn. In 1535 he was created Cardinal Priest of S. Vitale by Pope Paul III, and this fact enraged the king so much that he had him sentenced to death for refusing to acknowledge him as Supreme Head of the ‘Church of England’. St John Fisher was beheaded on June 22, 1535, dying as a martyr for the freedom of the Church and the sanctity of marriage. He was beatified in 1886 and canonised in 1935.

It's an interesting project, because it's all on-line and the materials are designed for individuals to print on an as needed basis:

The digital version of the St John Fisher Missale is a work in progress. In its complete form it will consist of a number of PDF-files with the following elements:

~The Ordo Missæ (available with and without a short Kyriale)
~The Order of Requiem Mass with some Propers of Masses for the Dead
~A selection of the Kyriale containing music for several Mass Ordinaries, Creeds and some other chants
~Proper texts for all Sundays, all feasts of First and Second Class, and some other occasions (like Ember Saturdays or Rogations)

For instance, here are links to the Propers for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14) and the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary (September 15).

William Boyce and William Byrd

William Boyce, English composer, organist, and editor, was baptized on September 11, 1711. He was the son of a cabinet-maker, born in London on the 7th of February 1710. As a chorister in St. Paul's he received his early musical education from Charles King and Dr. Maurice Greene, and he afterwards studied the theory of music under Dr. Pepusch. In 1734, having become organist of Oxford chapel, Vere Street, Cavendish Square, he set Lord Lansdowne's masque of Peleus and Thetis to music. In 1736 he left Oxford chapel and was appointed organist of St. Michael's church, Cornhill, and in the same year he became composer to the chapel royal, and wrote the music for John Lockman's oratorio David's Lamentation over Saul and Jonathan. In 1737 he was appointed to conduct the meetings of the three choirs of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford. In 1743 was written the serenata Solomon, in which occurs the favorite song "Softly rise, 0 southern breeze." In 1749 he received the degree of doctor of music from the university of Cambridge, as an acknowledgment of the merit of his setting of the ode performed at the installation of Henry Pelham, duke of Newcastle, as chancellor; and in this year he became organist of All-Hallows the Great and Less, Thames Street. A musical setting to The Chaplet, an entertainment by Moses Mendez, was Boyce's most successful achievement in this year. In 1750 he wrote songs for John Dryden's Secular Masque and in 1751 set another piece (The Shepherd's Lottery) by Mendez. He became master of the king's band in succession to Greene in 1757, and in 1758 he was appointed principal organist to the chapel royal. As an ecclesiastical composer Boyce ranks among the best representatives of the English school. His two church services and his anthems, of which the best specimens are By the Waters of Babylon and 0, Where shall Wisdom be found, are frequently performed. It should also be remembered that he wrote additional accompaniments and choruses for Henry Purcell's Te Deum and Jubilate, which the earlier musician had composed for the St. Cecilia's day of 1694. Boyce did this in his capacity of conductor at the annual festivals of the Sons of the Clergy at St. Paul's cathedral, an office which he had taken in succession to Greene. His twelve trios for two violins and a bass were long popular. One of his most valuable services to musical art was his publication in three volumes quarto of a work on Cathedral Music. The collection had been begun by Greene, but it was mainly the work of Boyce. The first volume appeared in 1760 and the last in 1778. On the 7th of February 1779 Boyce died from an attack of gout. He was buried under the dome of St. Paul's cathedral.

As editor of Cathedral Music, Boyce commented on various English composers of the past, including one of my favorites, William Byrd:
 
William Bird, was admitted a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1569. He, in conjunction with Thomas Tallis, published in 1575 a collection of their own compositions in Latin, entitled, Sacred Songs: and in the Years 1589, 1591, and 1605, he printed three other collections of his own Productions in the same Language, all of which had the same Title with the first conjoint Publication.

His works were, in his own time, in great Repute, both at Home and Abroad, and are still held in general Estimation: His Canon of Non nobis Domine, will, in particular, remain a perpetual Monument to his Memory.--- He died in 1623.

Notice that there is no mention of William Byrd's religion or that the "Sacred Songs" published in 1605 were actually the Gradualia (volume 1) which comprises "many short pieces of liturgical music, set in verse sections, which can be combined in various ways to form liturgically accurate Propers cycles for every significant feast and votive mass of the Roman Catholic Rite." But it's due to William Boyce's inclusion and editing of William Byrd's music that it has been part of the Anglican musical patrimony. William Boyce's most popular works now are his Eight Symphonies.

St. Ambrose Barlow, OSB

From the English College of Valladolid in Spain:

ST. Ambrose BARLOW OSB was born in Barlow Hall near Manchester, in the year 1595. Son of Sir Alexander Barlow and Mary Brereton, he was baptised in November of the same year in Didsbury.

He received his first academic training in the College of St. Gregory at Douai, and on the 20th of September 1610 was admitted as a pupil of the Royal College of St. Alban in VALLADOLID. On completing the second year of philosophical studies, he returned to Douai, where in 1616, in the College of St. Gregory, he made his religious profession. The following year he was ordained a priest.

On going to England, he exercised his missionary ministry mainly in the south of the county of Lancashire. His way of living was said be very simple and apostolic, and his enthusiasm for his sacred trade such that he was nonchalant about the dangers of the religious persecution.

Several times he was stopped and incarcerated. On Easter Sunday, the 25th of April 1631, at the moment of ending a mass the Protestant vicar of EccIes and his followers, armed with sticks and shields, arrested him. He was dragged before a judge, and incarcerated.

On the 7th of September, after four months of detention, he was processed in Lancaster, before Sir Robert Heath who had received orders from the government to inflict on him the maximum punishment, as a deterrent to the Catholics who were very numerous in that county.

Upon the reading of the indictment, Father Ambrose, without more ado, admitted to being a priest and having exercised his apostolate in England for more than twenty years. The following day he was formally sentenced, and on Friday 10th of September 1641 he was stripped hung and quartered.

Pope Paul VI, on the 25th of October 1970, solemnly canonised him.

 

Some of the background on his family is particularly interesting:

 

Ambrose was born at Barlow Hall, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, near Manchester in 1585. He was the fourth son of the nobleman Sir Alexander Barlow and his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Uryan Brereton. The Barlow family had been reluctant converts to the Church of England following the suppression of the Church of Rome in England and Wales. Ambrose's grandfather died in 1584 whilst imprisoned for his beliefs and Sir Alexander Barlow had two thirds of his estate confiscated as a result of his refusing to conform with the rules of the new established religion. On 30 November 1585, Ambrose was baptised at Didsbury chapel and went on to adhere to the Anglican faith until 1607, when he converted to Roman Catholicism.
In 1597, Ambrose was taken into the stewardship of Sir Uryan Legh, a relative who would care for him whilst he served out his apprenticeship as a page. However, upon completing this service, Barlow realised that his true vocation was for the priesthood, so he travelled to Douai in France to study at the English College there before attending the Royal College of Saint Alban in Valladolid, Spain.

"Persuading to Popery" in 1587

One of the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales: In his earlier years, George Douglas, of Edinburgh, Scotland, worked as a schoolmaster in the English county of Rutland. He subsequently journeyed overseas to Paris, where he studied for the priesthood and was ordained. There are uncertainties in the biographical details of his life, including the specific year of his ordination. He may have been a member of a religious congregation, perhaps the Franciscan Order, but this cannot be established. Father Douglas came to England about ten years after his ordination to serve the country’s Catholics persecuted under Queen Elizabeth I. It was while laboring thus that he was arrested a first time, but was thereafter released. He was arrested a second time at Ripton in the northern county of Yorkshire. Father Douglas was sentenced to death for “persuading to popery,” that is, for winning converts to the Catholic faith. At York he was executed by drawing and quartering on September 9, 1587, manifesting great fortitude during his torments. He was beatified by Blessed John Paul II in 1987, more than 400 years after his martyrdom.

Episode Six of "The English Reformation Today"!

Since today is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I'll begin this broadcast with the Collect for the Feast--and with the note that Elizabethan England celebrated the birth of the last Tudor monarch with more festivity than that of the Mother of God!

Starting with some biographical notes about Elizabeth Tudor (pictured at left: Wikipedia commons source), I'll then discuss her Reformation Parliament--Catholic resistance--the Via Media of the Church of England (39 Articles and the Book of Common Prayer. I'll also discuss how the compromise of the established church, between Calvinism and Catholicism, pleased no one, as "Puritans" were disappointed in the incomplete Reform and latent "Popishness" of the Church of England.

Then recusancy and resistance, rebellion and martyrdom will occupy much of the broadcast, as I discuss The Northern Rebellion, Pope St. Pius V's Papal Bull "Regnans in Excelsis", and the choice Catholics faced: loyalty to country; loyality to Church. The efforts of missionary priests; their dangerous missions; the laity's way of dealing with recusancy and conformity--those issues are very important and highlight the struggles and sacrifices of Catholics during Elizabeth's 45 year reign.

Next week, I'll wrap up the discussion of Elizabeth by looking at the diplomatic struggles she faced with Mary, Queen of Scots and Philip II of Spain--in the religious context of the 16th century, including war in the Spanish Netherlands, the Spanish Armada, reaction to its failure, war in Ireland, and the succession. This Virgin Queen left no offspring to follow her on the throne, so James VI of Scotland, Mary of Scotland's son, comes south in 1603 when Elizabeth dies.

Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation is an excellent resource for understanding this reign, although I do say so myself.  welcome all listeners of Radio Maria US to my blog, whether you're listening on one of their radio stations or on line or through one of their apps.  I invite you to call in with questions and comments toll-free at 866-333-MARY(6279). Just a reminder, too, that podcasts of previous episodes of The English Reformation Today are available on the Radio Maria US website.

A Priest and Two Laymen in 1600

Franciscan Thomas Palaser and two laymen, John Norton and John Talbot who had assisted him were executed on September 8, 1600, near the end of Elizabeth I's reign/life. According to the Royal English College of Valladolid, Spain:

BLESSED Thomas PALASER OSF was probably born in Ellerton-upon-Sway, near Richmond in the County of Yorkshire. He was seminarian at Rheims (France) and in VALLADOLID, where he was ordained a priest the year 1596. He was arrested shortly after returning to England, but escaped. He exercised his Mission in the north of the Country. Condemned for being a priest, he was stripped, hung, drawn and quartered in Durham, on the 8th of September 1600 (the same day as the Image of the Virgin "The Vulnerata" was solemnly received into the Chapel, before the wife of the King Philip III, Margarita Lady of Austria). More about "The Vulnerata" here.

He was beatified by the Pope John Paul II, on the 22nd of November 1987.

His two lay companions, Blessed John Norton and Blessed John Talbot, were also beatified that day, just as they shared the day of execution. Father Palaser was arrested in the home of John Norton, whose wife Margaret was also arrested. Norton, Mrs. Norton and Talbot were all found guilty of the felony of assisting a traitor, a Catholic priest. Mrs. Norton was not executed because she was pregnant at the time.

The College Prayer to Our Lady:
May our Lady Vulnerata and all our Martyr Saints intercede for us with the Lord, that our students and benefactors, past and present, may be helped and saved by him. Amen.

Caroline Martyrs of 1644

 

From the Salford Liturgy Roman Martyrology: Blessed Ralph Corby, SJ, priest and martyr and Blessed John Duckett, priest and martyr

Martyred at Tyburn under Charles I in 1644. Ralph originated in the northeast and ministered in County Durham after his ordination, enjoying a lengthy ministry of 12 years until his arrest in July 1644. He was condemned at the Old Bailey and executed at Tyburn. John Duckett, executed with him, also worked in County Durham after his conversion to Catholicism and ordination.

 

Blessed Ralph Corby was born into a devout Irish Catholic family in Maynooth, Ireland, on March 25, 1598. All of Ralph's family took religious vows, including his parents who decided to do so after their children had all joined various orders. Ralph's father became a Jesuit lay brother and his mother a Benedictine nun.

Ralph joined the Jesuits, along with his two brothers and volunteered for the perilous mission to minister in England at a time when it was illegal to be a Catholic priest.

He ministered covertly in the north of England, near Durham, for 12 years before he was discovered and subsequently sentenced to death.

Blessed Ralph was hanged, drawn, and quartered on September 7, 1644 at Tyburn, England. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929.

 

Blessed John Duckett was probably a grandson of Blessed James Duckett, born at Underwinder, in the parish of Sedbergh, Yorkshire, in 1603; died 7 September, 1644. He was ordained priest in 1639 and afterwards went to Paris where he studied three years in the College of Arras. He had an extraordinary gift of prayer, and while yet a student would spend whole nights in contemplation. On his way to the English mission, he spent two months in spiritual exercises, under the direction of his uncle, the Carthusian prior at Nieuport. He laboured for about a year in Durham and was taken near Wolsingham on his way to baptize two children, 2 July, 1644. The place which tradition declares to be that of his arrest is now marked by a tall stone cross. Carried to Sunderland, he was examined by a Parliamentary Committee of sequestrators, and placed in irons. He confessed his priesthood and was thereupon sent up to London with Father Ralph Corbie, S. J. (q. v.), who had been arrested about the same time near Newcastle-on-Tyne. They were committed to Newgate, and edified the crowds of Catholics who flocked to see them by their joyousness, their sanctity, and their longing to suffer for Christ. A reprieve for one of them having been obtained, each refused to take it for himself. On his way to execution, Duckett astonished all by his supernatural joy; comforting those who wept for him, he said smiling: "Why weep you for me who am glad at heart of this happy day?" His jailers even were so struck by his gladness that they exclaimed "assuredly this man dies for a good cause". He suffered with Father Corbie, at Tyburn. In a farewell letter to the Bishop of Chalcedon, he wrote on the eve of his martyrdom: "I fear not death, nor I contemn not life. If life were my lot, I would endure it patiently; but if death, I shall receive it joyfully, for that Christ is my life, and death is my gain. Never since my receiving of Holy Orders did I so much fear death as I did life, and now, when it approacheth can I faint?"

More on these Caroline martyrs, arrested and executed while Parliament was in power.

More Life Than Biography: Chesterton on Cobbett

G.K. Chesterton's short life of William Cobbett, author of Rural Rides and The History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland contains, of course, some of Chesterton's famous paradoxical turns of phrase. One of my favorites comes in the penultimate chapter, "The Rural Rider": "Even the most elementary sketches of Cobbett have tended to give too much of his biography and too little of his life." (p. 82 of the IHS Press edition).

Chesterton really enshrines paradox--or seeming contradiction--as the method of this study of William Cobbett, for he says: "It is the paradox of his life that he loved the past, and he alone lived in the future. . . . he seemed like a survival and a relic of times gone by. And he alone was in living touch with the times that were to come."

Certainly Cobbett's reinterpretation of the English Reformation expressed great contradiction; contradiction of all that Englishmen had been taught about the 16th century: “He seemed to be calling black white, when he declared that what was white had been blackened, or that what seemed to be white had only been whitewashed.” Cobbett called Elizabeth I, "Bloody Bess" and Mary I, "Good Queen Mary"--and people reading his work knew that Elizabeth I had been Bloody, "if pursuing people with execution and persecution and torture makes a person bloody" and that Mary I had been good, "if certain real virtues and responsibilities make a person good" -- as Chesterton notes, "It was not really Cobbett's history that was in controversy; it was his controversialism. It was not his facts that were challenged, it was his challenge."

Dale Ahlquist of the American Chesterton Society provides a "lecture" on Chesterton's William Cobbett here, noting that "Chesterton’s books about others are really about himself. The qualities he admired in these indeed admirable characters were qualities that we immediately recognize in Chesterton. This is especially true of William Cobbett." So if you are interested in knowing more about either Cobbett or Chesterton, I recommend this book.

Monarchs as Monsters: Richard III and Henry VIII

From The Catholic Herald, comparing and contrasting Richard III and Henry VIII:

A car park in Leicester may be home to the last king of England to die in battle: Richard III. Last weekend archaeologists from the University of Leicester brought in heavy diggers to the city’s Greyfriars car park, which historians believe to be the site of the old Franciscan friary where the last Plantagenet was buried.

It’s an exciting time for fans of Richard III, of whom there are many, this king having societies all over the English-speaking world dedicated to softening his image. This is a little strange, considering that Gloucester was a usurper and probably had his young nephews, Edward V and his brother Richard, murdered in the Tower. . . .

Best of all for Ricardians, there came proof in 1973 that a “hunchback” had been drawn on to the famous painting in the National Portrait Gallery, no doubt part of the Tudor black propaganda. Certainly no contemporary account ever mentions any deformity, at a time when a disability would be the central feature of someone’s public persona. . . .

If Richard is rescued from a car park (a fate that has also befallen John Knox), the only questions are where he should be re-buried – would it be Westminster Abbey, where the majority of late medieval kings rest? – and whether this pious man would have a Catholic ceremony.

Even if Richard were responsible for the princes’ deaths he would be nothing like as big a villain as his great-nephew Henry VIII, who destroyed Greyfriars Abbey in Leicester in the worst episode of cultural vandalism in English history. Among the many jewels ruined was Battle Abbey, built by William the Conqueror during one of his brief spasms of guilt over the deaths of 7,000 men here in 1066.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries="the worst episode of cultural vandalism in English history": well put. The University of Leicester has a website with resources on "The Greyfriars Project". I've read Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time at least twice; the book has a neat premise of Inspector Alan Grant in hospital with a broken leg investigating the crime of the murder of the Princes in the Tower. She almost persuaded me, but I didn't like her dissing of Thomas More. Here's a re-evaluation of her historical mystery, from washingtonpost.com.

Lady Jane Grey and the Tower of London

From Nancy Bilyeau, author of The Crown, comes this background from The English Historical Fiction blog:

On a December night in 1840, a sizable group of writers, editors, publishers, printers and illustrators gathered at the Sussex Hotel, in the fashionable town of Royal Tunbridge Wells, for a dinner party. It is possible that Charles Dickens, the young author of Oliver Twist and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, was invited to the party. Most definitely in attendance was George Cruikshank, the talented illustrator of Oliver Twist.

The host of this lavish affair was the famed 35-year-old novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. The occasion: the successful serialization over the last year of his fifth novel, The Tower of London: A Historical Romance, which told the story of the tragic Lady Jane Grey, beginning with her arrival by barge at the Tower to launch her nine-day-reign and ending with her decapitation on Tower Green on July 10, 1553. . . .

That dazzling night at Royal Tunbridge Wells, Ainsworth, mercifully, could not know that his books would go out of print, that fellow writers such as Edgar Allan Poe would describe his prose as "turgid pretension."

Yet he is not without a legacy. The book celebrated that night, The Tower of London: A Historical Romance, triggered a new kind of interest in William the Conqueror's castle keep. It was an interest that deepened through the Victorian age, and is part of the reason visitors pour into the Tower, to the tune of 2 million a year. . . .

Ainsworth opened the door to a more illustrious period in the Tower's history. It's true that the novel's prose is melodramatic ("heaving bosoms," "piercing black eyes" and "sinister smiles") and the pages are crowded with Gothic characters (not one or two but three supporting characters who are giants--and a dwarf!) along with august personages of the past. But Ainsworth's diligent research brings to life the grounds, the kitchens, the passageways, the prison cells and the beautiful chapels of the Tower. He made full, imaginative use of the Tower of London, as a setting for a story of high drama. And Cruikshank's 40 engravings and 58 woodcuts play their suggestive part.

And in the center of it all is Lady Jane Grey, a character of undeniable pathos, surrounded by conspiracies. Ainsworth invests the Spanish ambassador, Simon Renard, with the malevolent abilities of a Blofeld straight from Bond. Northumberland is formidable indeed.There is an energy to the book, and an eerie, even frightening atmosphere. The rack, the Scavenger's Daughter and the infamous Little Ease are all present and accounted for.

So, in addition to making the Tower of London a great tourist site, William Harrison Ainsworth might have contributed to the common view of Queen Jane Dudley as a great romantically tragic victim. As I commented on my Radio Maria US show last Saturday, I think that view was corrected by Leanda de Lisle in her book The Sisters Who Would be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Tragedy, which I reviewed here.